While the free trade religious agenda pundits scream from the roof top, oh that's protectionist and it is conveniently ignored that pouring trillions of U.S. taxpayer dollars to financial institutions is the ultimate protectionism, this little headline blips across the news aggregators:
WTO Sees 9% Drop in 2009 Global Trade Amid Recession :
Global trade will plunge 9 percent this year, the most since World War II, as the recession deepens, the World Trade Organization said.
“Economic contraction in most of the industrial world and steep export declines already posted in the early months of this year by most major economies -- particularly those in Asia -- make for an unusually bleak 2009 trade assessment,” the Geneva- based WTO said in its annual assessment of world trade.
Manufacturers in the U.S., Europe and Asia are struggling as the worst recession in 60 years broadens. Exporters from Volkswagen AG, Europe’s largest automaker, and ThyssenKrupp AG, Germany’s biggest steelmaker, to Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co., the largest U.S. tiremaker, and Sony Corp., the world’s No. 2 consumer-electronics maker, are slashing output and cutting jobs to cope with collapsing demand.
“The contraction in developed countries will be particularly severe, with exports falling by 10 percent this year,” the report said. “In developing countries, which are far more dependent on trade for growth, exports will shrink by some 2 percent to 3 percent in 2009.”
European exports to the U.S. fell the most in five years in 2008 as the financial crisis curtailed demand in the region’s main trading partners, data released on March 23 show. U.S. shipments abroad, which tumbled in January to the lowest level since 2006, have slumped at a 44 percent annual pace in the most recent six months of data, with imports shrinking 51 percent as Americans stop buying everything from OPEC oil to Japanese cars.
How do these religious free trade zealots blame the big bad boogie man, protectionism now? Don't worry, their public relations spin masters will find a way.
Could it be that wiping out the middle class by shipping their jobs overseas, exposing them to income instability, labor arbitrage, careers cut short, has serious repercussions?
When will creative destruction be applied to these various special interests and global elites instead of the middle class?
Well Said
"Could it be that wiping out the middle class by shipping their jobs overseas, exposing them to income instability, labor arbitrage, careers cut short, has serious repercussions?"
Yes.
This has been another in a long series of simple answers to intelligent questions.
Maybe now
We will learn what Joseph told the Pharoh- that only by saving seed from good years for use during bad, and only by relying on your own natural resources, will your people survive.
I think the majority of free traders and bankers either think they're smarter than everybody else who ever lived, or have failed to understand the economic lessons of the Old Testament.
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Moral hazards would not exist in a system designed to eliminate fraud.
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Maximum jobs, not maximum profits.
Where did it all start? Was
Where did it all start? Was it just after Vietnam when conglomeration was the big bus. school fad? How long after
Nixon went to China did things start to change? (Initially, not all Wal-mart goods were made in China. When did we lose the electronics industries? Recall that during the 70s the Trilateral Commission, as a think thank, was active in trying to convert the U.S. to a service economy. I think we're seeing that it succeeded in some ways and failed in many others.
A large part of it
Was when the world crossed the 2 billion population mark. Economic systems simply don't work when they get too large- regardless of the system.
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Moral hazards would not exist in a system designed to eliminate fraud.
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Maximum jobs, not maximum profits.